Competence porn

After that blustering buffoon badgering bison, it would be nice to see a thoughtful man behaving competently. How about this? Mark Levy was one of 21 pilots flying WWII aircraft in a British airshow, when the engine on his P-51 conked out, and he had to sputter to a landing in a cornfield. And best of all, there’s full cockpit video of the whole thing! You get to watch these magnificent old planes flying in formation, and then crisis as the engine begins to fail (and you know the pilot is going to be fine).

It’s less than two minutes between engine failure and grinding to a stop in a cornfield, but the video goes on for over a half hour as the pilot discusses what he was thinking and what he did and what his concerns and priorities were. I don’t know about you, but I love this stuff: glamorous machines and thoughtful people behind them.

I’m also even more impressed with the WWII pilots. Imagine managing this beast while other airplanes are shooting at you, over ground with big anti-aircraft guns intentionally trying to knock you out of the sky.

Prediction: Lawrence Krauss will be resigning

Everyone knew that Krauss had been ill-behaved towards women, and there’d even been that story of him groping a fan at a conference. We all believed it, but it sure took a long time for the powers-that-be to get around to confirming it. Now they have: ASU has released their findings, and confirmed that Lawrence Krauss grabbed a woman’s breast in public.

Arizona State University has concluded that physics professor Lawrence Krauss breached the school’s sexual harassment policy by groping a woman at a conference in Australia.

The incident, which happened at a dinner in November 2016 in Melbourne as part of the Australian skeptics national convention, was revealed in February in a BuzzFeed News investigation that described allegations of unwanted sexual advances, groping, and inappropriate comments by Krauss over more than a decade.

The incident in Melbourne happened when one of Krauss’s fans took a selfie photograph with him. A witness, microbiologist Melanie Thomson, filed a formal complaint with Arizona State in July of 2017, stating that the professor had grabbed the woman’s breast. (The woman in the selfie did not complain to the university.)

Krauss made excuses that were not believed, and also tried to place the blame on his accuser.

Thomson told BuzzFeed News that she felt vindicated. “The original investigation was basically a ‘he said, she said’ scenario, where they believed him over me,” Thomson said. “And that’s the way these things often go.”

She still wants Krauss to apologize, she said, and to withdraw his claim, made to BuzzFeed News and in a nine-page response to the article, that her complaint was “fabricated with malicious intent.”

“I call for him to retract his retaliatory, inflammatory, libelous remarks,” Thomson said.

I find the whole affair disappointing. I’ve had people ask to take a photo with me, I’ve never felt any urge to fondle them in response. It’s just sad when a smart guy is stuck with an adolescent emotional brain that leads him to misuse people that way.

I’ve known of college professors in the past who’ve screwed up this way, and have had to accept restrictions, like denial of promotions and strictly enforced policies with students, but they’ve managed to keep their jobs. I don’t see them getting away with slaps on the wrist anymore — ASU is a respectable university, which isn’t going to want confirmed harassers on their staff. I’m going to guess he won’t be associated with them much longer.

Although I could be wrong — some people seem to lead a charmed life, or maybe Chapman University and Scientific American and the ACSH don’t seem to care what kind of scum work for them. Maybe Krauss can find a position in one of those institutions if his situation at Arizona falls completely apart?

Poor impulse control

Perhaps you were wondering what happened to this guy who was seen taunting a bison in Yellowstone park.

His name is Raymond Reinke. He has a peculiar notion about how to enjoy a vacation in a national park. He’d been making a grand tour of some of the more spectacular sites in the Rockies, making a public nuisance of himself.

Reinke had been traveling to multiple national parks over the last week. On July 28, he was first arrested by law enforcement rangers at Grand Teton National Park for a drunk and disorderly conduct incident. He spent the night in the Teton County Jail, and was then released on bond.

Following his release, he traveled to Yellowstone National Park. Rangers at Yellowstone stopped his vehicle for a traffic violation on July 31. Reinke appeared to be intoxicated and argumentative. He was cited as a passenger for failure to wear a seat belt. It is believed that after that traffic stop, Reinke encountered the bison.

Yellowstone rangers received several wildlife harassment reports from concerned visitors and found Reinke later that evening, issuing a citation requiring a court appearance. The video of the event surfaced after that citation had been issued.

On Thursday, August 2, Yellowstone rangers connected Reinke’s extensive history, and seeing the egregious nature of the wildlife violation, the Assistant U.S. Attorney requested his bond be revoked. The request was granted and on the night of August 2, a warrant was issued for Reinke’s arrest.

Reinke had told rangers that his plans were to travel to Glacier National Park. Last night, August 2, Glacier National Park rangers began looking for his vehicle. Simultaneous with that search, rangers responded to the Many Glacier Hotel because two guests were arguing and creating a disturbance in the hotel dining room. Rangers identified one of the individuals involved as Reinke.

He’s in jail now. Maybe next year he can just stay at home and get drunk.

Fire all the writers

Here’s what passes for creativity in the new Mission Impossible: Fallout movie: you know how it’s a standard cliche in this kind of movie to have the ticking time bomb with the red LED display counting down to the explosion and you know the hero is going to disarm it in the last second or two? That wasn’t good enough for this movie. No, they had to increase the threat by having two bombs that are synchronized, and if you don’t cut the green wire in both of them simultaneously, they’ll explode, because they’re in radio communication with each other.

But wait! Even that won’t work. The countdown timer is locked in to inevitable detonation, and if you tinker with either of them, they’ll go off. It’s impossible to stop the bomb once triggered.

Except! There is a remote detonator that triggered the countdown, and there is a bug in the software so that if you yank the key out of the detonator AND cut the green wires in both bombs at the same time, then the bombs will fizzle. Of course, the remote detonator has a red LED countdown on it, too.

No spoilers here, so I won’t tell you if the Mission Impossible team manages to coordinate this triple shutdown, and I especially won’t tell you if they do it in the last second. If you can’t figure it out, you deserve to watch this movie.

One other detail I have to share. The terrorist leader who was responsible for this intricate, complex bomb mechanism that would have Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames racing to do precisely choreographed things to the ridiculous circuitry was such a fanatic that he had suicidally decided to stay with his bombs to watch them go off and see his enemies vanquished. And I’m thinking that all he needed was one simple button that he could push that would instantly trigger the nuclear explosion. No timers needed. No fancy schmancy radio links. Just “Ah, Ethan Hunt, my hated enemy. You have landed in my base…”<click>BOOOOM!. The whole elaborate setup was irrelevant.

There were other lapses in reason. Ethan Hunt kills a pilot flying his helicopter, leaps into the seat, taps quizzically on a dial in the complex array of instruments in front of him, and says “I guess that’s my altitude” — this is apparently the first time he’s flown a helicopter — and then proceeds to go on a dizzying high speed, ground- and cliff-hugging helicopter chase through rugged mountain valleys. No problem. He finally catches up with the bad guy’s helicopter, and his solution is a kamikaze collision that has both of them smoking and on fire in shattered machines crashing onto a mountaintop. They both survive. Then the choppers roll down the mountainside and over a cliff. They both survive. Then they fall through a cliffside chimney, all herkey-jerkey like, and during the descent Ethan Hunt jumps into the bad guy’s chopper and they punch each other. The helicopters crash to the ground. They both survive. They punch and kick some more. One helicopter rolls over yet another cliff, and is hanging by a long cable. But of course they end up clinging to that cable at a terrifying height, punching and kicking each other. Then the cable snaps. Helicopter falls, finally explodes.

Only one survives. If you can’t figure out who, then this is the movie for you.

Also, Alec Baldwin gets murdered a couple of times, I lost track. He keeps coming back anyway. I could tell you that the entire cast gets vaporized in a nuclear explosion or flaming helicopter crash, and it wouldn’t matter. The key grip or the caterer would just rip off a rubber mask, revealing Tom Cruise was in disguise the whole time, and the movie could proceed.

It was predictable and trite throughout. There was only one mystery: Henry Cavill’s mustache. Cavill had appeared as Superman in that bomb, Justice League, and was shooting Mission Impossible: Fallout when he was called back for some reshoots. As Superman, he was cleanshaven; as Walker, CIA agent, he’s got an ugly stubbly beard and mustache. They decided that rather than delaying the reshoots and simply shaving, they would spend $3 million to erase his mustache with some bad, obvious CGI.

Clearly, his mustache was very important to this movie. I kept watching and waiting for the moment when it crawls off his face to do some derring-do, like a gunfight or a motorcycle chase, since it’s got a $3 million value (hey, I’ll shave my mustache off for $3 million!). Spoiler alert: it never does. It just sits there on his lip, the entire movie, daydreaming about its bank account.

There is one remaining mystery. Cavill was in one ghastly stinker of a movie, Justice League, and now he’s come back with yet another stinker, Mission Impossible: Fallout. Is his career like those falling helicopters? Boom, crash, it doesn’t matter. Crash again. Stagger out, waving his fists. Tumble off a cliff, kick, punch. But at some point, the writers will insist on a giant flaming explosion and a death he can’t survive. Probably.

(Suddenly, PZ Myers claws at a wad of latex over his face, peeling it back to reveal…the craggy, strong-jawed good looks of Henry Cavill! Cue Mission Impossible theme. Cue ka-ching, ka-ching as cash pours into his bank account. Cue next crappy movie.)

Anyone got any ghost repellent?

I’m worried, if this is true: Fed Up With Mortal Men, Women Are Having Sex with Ghosts. I’m concerned because I live only a short distance from a cemetery, and even if I didn’t, it might give my wife reason to think she could improve her sex life by translating me to a different realm.

It’s got multiple testimonials from real women! Also, Elayne Riggs told me about it, so it must be true.

…a woman named Amethyst Realm appeared on the British daytime television show This Morning, claiming that she began having sex with ghosts in her home and has not had since with a human being since. Her first erotic encounter with a ghost occurred 10 years ago, while she was still in a relationship with her mortal fiancé. As can occur with affairs, Realm was caught mid-coitus when her husband-to-be returned early one day from a trip away. “He saw the shape of a man through the spare room window,” she explained.

Betrayed, Realm’s fiancé broke up with her, and she and the ghost then decided to fuck everywhere in the house: “Once my fiancé had left, [we had sex] everywhere, [but] always within the building,” she said. That particular ghost romance lasted for a time, until the entity “started to appear less,” and Realm ended the inter-dimensional affair.

After that, Realm began to have regular sex with a variety of ghosts, each as distinct in style and feel than any human mate might be. “I’ve got no interest in men now,” she proclaimed.

Now I’m reassured, though. She’s lying. There’s now way sex with ghosts could be better than sex with real men. After all, ghosts would be kind of gauzy and nebulous, weak and barely perceptible. The strongest kind of interaction they’d be able to have is delicate little butterfly kisses, soft ephemeral strokes along the skin like hummingbird down, quiet, barely audible whispers in her ears, and a bit of moaning — I’ll admit, they’re probably really good at moaning — and no one would enjoy any of that.

Just in case, though, I might want to stock up on bottles of Ghost-Be-Gone.

Andrew Sullivan makes Sarah Jeong’s point for her — how kind!

I thought the Right was supposed to be against political correctness and excessive sensitivity? But it seems they are quite happy to wax indignant about tone when it’s their skin being pricked. The latest incident is that the NY Times hired Sarah Jeong, a liberal leaning writer of Korean descent who has mocked the fragile fee-fees of white people. We’re supposed to set aside our concern about bigotry when a white writer uses the N-word, or when another white male writer announces that women who get an abortion deserve the death penalty, but poking fun at the privileged position of white people…oh my god, this is unforgivable racism.

Right now on the internet you can find lots of people clutching their pearls and quoting old tweets by Jeong — whole litanies of strung-together excerpts making a kind of poetry of laughter at white sensitivity. It’s entertaining because these articles are making Jeong’s point for her: that an awful lot of white people have achieved eminence while not actually earning it, and they’re terribly touchy about it.

Speaking of aggrieved privileged white men granted a voice far above their talent, of course Andrew Sullivan has contributed to the genre. Oh, Mr Sullivan, if only you weren’t quite so predictable and trite…

Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

Poor Andrew, so innocent, so naive, so trusting. No, I wouldn’t call that “eliminationist” rhetoric. David Neiwert has a good working definition of the term, and has a great many horrifying examples. Jeong doesn’t even come close. Ribbing the people in power is a perfectly reasonable tactic, especially when it’s clear it’s not a serious proposal — and no, laughing at people who complain that other people are outbreeding them, or calling them groveling goblins who must live underground, isn’t eliminationist. It’s kind of rude, at worst, and as someone pale enough to burn beneath incandescent lights, that comment does sting a little bit, because it bears a bit of truth in it.

But Sullivan should have avoided quoting her, because this one is a little too harsh: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” It’s true of me, I’ll concede, but you know who it fits perfectly? Andrew Sullivan. And there he goes, pissing on the internet again.

Oh, look, I just alienated another 42,000 atheists!

A few months ago, I called out a couple of atheist Facebook pages. I wasn’t a member of either “Atheist Safehouse” or “The Thinking Atheist Fanpage”, but stupid obnoxious Facebook kept pestering me with suggestions that I join them…and I’d tell it “no!”, it would leave me alone, and then a few weeks later it would start up again. I was annoyed.

The reason I wasn’t interested was that they advertised themselves with a photomontage of Famous Atheists, you know, the usual suspects, some of whom I’d rather not ever meet again, and they were almost all men. It was just stunningly bad advertising, for one, since they were clearly aiming at a target demographic that was rather narrow, but it was also shallow and cult-like. It was too much trouble to portray an idea or a principle, so hey, let’s just make it clear that we’re a boys’ club and that we adhere to a dogma promoted by these modern prophets.

As I said, I didn’t join, for obvious reasons. But what if someone did join? Atheist Safehouse apparently has over 42,000 members, and is one of the biggest special interest groups in Facebook atheism. And what if they were a woman? And what if they pointed out the sexism of their advertising?

Chrys Stevenson entered their lair.

The equal representation of women in public and private spaces matters. It matters because saving women’s lives and maximising their wellbeing requires a tectonic cultural shift in our society that starts with recognising women’s contributions. It is, frankly, inconceivable that a group which prides itself on intellect and reason would choose a composite photo showing eight men – mostly white – to represent its mixed-gendered membership of 42,114 members.

I joined the group last night in order to comment. Naively, I thought it would be a simple matter of drawing the issue to the attention of the admins and getting the photo changed.

(Note: the one non-white man in the photo is Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is not and does not want to be associated with movement atheism at all. It would be nice if people would at least respect that. But at least he gets to join Charles Darwin in the list of scientists uncomfortable with atheism who get coopted anyway.)

What she discovered is that, rather than make a simple change to the profile photo of the group, they have rules that you’re not allowed to talk about the photo. They have encountered this complaint so many times before that the regulars were bored and predicted that the suggestion would be squashed…and it was.

If an atheist group of 41,114 (41,112 members now Cushla and I have been booted) cannot take the simple step of removing a single photo and replacing it with a more representative image, what hope is there that atheism can be rescued from the grip of the immature, socially inept, MRA man-babies who seem to have colonised the movement.

They use a photo of 8 famous atheist men to illustrate their “Atheist Safehouse”: two of them are dead, two, maybe three, are libertarian jack-offs, one is under investigation and has lost his prestigious position for sexual harassment, and one doesn’t want anything to do with the atheist movement. They refuse to even consider changing it.

I can maybe see their point. One could argue that the picture is a fair and honest portrait of the atheist movement today, so they’re just practicing truth in advertising.